Five Tips for Online Dating

Online-dating expert Andi Forness shares her tips for navigating the world of online dating.

By Shelby Woods, Photo by Kendra E. Henderson

Andi Forness is the cofounder of a recreational roller-derby league, a Jungian spiritual psychology life coach and an online-dating expert. After her breakup three years ago, she kept finding herself in the same place with men. As a bilingual dyslexia specialist, Forness has always had a fascination with repatterining the mind, and she knew in order to get out of her dating rut, she would have to create new experiences for herself. She decided to construct an organized step-bystep strategy to navigate the online-dating world and stop wasting her time on dates that never led anywhere. Successful outcomes to online dating don’t have to take years. Forness offers up some helpful tips for how to make online dating more efficient, effective and fun.

GIVE YOURSELF TIME.

“You have to make dating intentional. You want to meet someone, fall in love and get married, but the first step before any of that is you have to be available. Look at your schedule and make free time. Say no to parties with friends. Say no to work obligations. Say no to being busy. You almost have to physically create space. A lot of people go online to date and then they can’t make plans for another week, and a week online is like a year. It becomes a missed connection. Before you even start online dating, start making space on your calendar.”

FOCUS.

“Newbies will go onto dating apps and be bored. Whatever you put your attention on will grow, so create a schedule. For example, get online at like 8 a.m. and swipe and respond for 30 minutes. Go into your set 30 minutes with the intention of finding love, planning a date or making conversation.”

POLISH YOUR PROFILE.

“A lot of people make their profiles about selling themselves. Start speaking to who you are wanting. It’ll create a different energy than making a profile all about yourself. Include what you would want to do with a potential partner, such as hiking, listening to live music or trying a recipe you find online. This will speed up the process by allowing the other person to visualize themself in your life. Your profile is the most important part of online dating. Typically, when I look at women’s profiles, they’re so generic. If there’s something cool that you want to do, like maybe a drag-queen holiday boat party, put it on there! You should stand out. There’s something unique
about you and people want to know what that is.”

STRIKE UP A CONVERSATION.

“Some people spend weeks texting somebody and then wonder why they’re bored. It’s because you haven’t made a connection. The platform you use for online dating is just a lead; you have to add some human components to it. Get on the phone. Let them hear your voice. Let them hear your laugh. Once you have the flow of a conversation, you can decide whether or not you want to take it to a date. That way, you aren’t wasting time going on dates with people that you won’t be able to have a conversation with because you’ve set that up in advance.”

STAY PRESENT.

“We’ve all been hurt before. We don’t want to take fears from a past relationship into a new one. It’s not fair. Take things one step at a time, and don’t go into online dating anticipating problems. Let relationships organically unfold with the intention of finding love. Things will probably unfold differently than you expected them to.”

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